Only Us
by jmc-ord
Summary: AU: When Thatcher Grey gives custody of ten-year-old Meredith back to Ellis, the estranged mother and daughter must learn how to accept and understand one another while they find their way as a family. An AU-prequel. Little Mer/Ellis-centric.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Been rewatching and getting wrecked by the early seasons of Grey's and one thing that struck me this time was Ellis and Meredith's complicated relationship, or tbh, lack thereof. So much of who Meredith is was shaped by her childhood and her relationship with her mother, and I have always felt that Grey's left too many loose threads between them. In my opinion, not enough of their relationship when Mer was a child was highlighted or even worked through to the depth that it deserved when she was an adult, so this is my fix-it/take on their story.**

**This'll be pretty AU but I will be incorporating elements from canon. For the sake of this story, the following is true: Thatcher and Ellis were married and she did have an affair with Richard. They got divorced when Mer was five and Ellis left to go to Boston after Richard refused to leave Adele. Thatcher was the one that got custody of Meredith in the divorce. He is only about to get remarried to Susan, and now wants to give custody of their daughter back to Ellis, who's a general surgeon at Mass Gen in Boston. **

* * *

Rubbing her temples to alleviate the pressure headache she felt coming on, Ellis Grey sighed heavily as she sat all alone in the locker room of Massachusetts General Hospital, the early morning sunlight creeping in and illuminating the cramped and musty storage space.

She rotated her head slightly to glance at the clock on the wall, her stomach clenching at the realization that she had less than ten minutes to get changed, walk over to the parking lot, and be on the road to get to the airport. She didn't want to be late. She _couldn't _be late.

Inhaling a deep, centering breath, she rose to stand on her weary feet that had just survived an 18-hour shift, eight of which she spent in the operating room, saving a man's life.

She shed her uniform and slipped on a pair of dark wash jeans and a black sweater, already feeling that slight discomfort she always did when she put on street clothes. She would much rather be in her navy scrubs and white lab coat. At least she looked like herself in them.

Bounding her hair into a loose, messy ponytail, she inspected her reflection in the mirror hanging on the back of the door and cringed when she noticed the prominent, dark shadows under her eye, the deep crease in her forehead, and the fatigue marked all over her face, briefly wondering if _she_ would still recognize her. She gathered her belongings and closed her locker without another thought, there was no time to dwell on them now.

She made it to the end of the row before running into Marie Cerone, a fellow attending. They weren't necessarily friends but they weren't just coworkers either, they teetered somewhere in between. They had a sort of understanding of one another and a shared level of respect. At the moment, apart from her patients, the Spanish doctor was the only person that Ellis seemed to have in her life.

But that would all change in a matter of hours.

"Jake's about to cut someone open who swallowed not one, but _ten_ Judy doll heads," Marie said in fascination. "Want to come check it out before—wait, are you leaving?" The woman balked, scanning the blonde from head to toe. "It's not your day off?

"Yes," Ellis nodded imperceptibly. "And I'll be out the rest of the weekend. I'm actually running late, so I'll see you Monday morning."

She moved to go around her, but Marie was milliseconds faster and cut her off before she could take another step.

"Wait, Ellis. You're off for three days?" Marie questioned, a mixture of confusion and worry coloring her expression. In the almost five years that she's known her, Ellis Grey has _never_ taken the day off, let alone three. At least not willingly. "Why? What's going on? Are you okay?"

Ellis took her fingers and brushed her forehead diffidently, mulling over how to explain herself. _This_ is why she didn't have friends. The questions. She flicked her eyes up to meet Marie's, brown ones that were piercing into her with such a rapt attention. She dropped her gaze, unable to take the concern in them.

"I—" Ellis sighed. With the exception of apprising Dr. Henry Cooper, Mass Gen's Chief of Surgery, for absence purposes, she didn't feel it necessary to share the news she received almost two months ago now with anyone else. It's not that she was denial, or ignoring it either. She thought about what's to come constantly, at least every second that she's not in surgery, for seven weeks now. It was all she could think about.

_She _was all that she could think about.

"I have to go to the airport to pick up my daughter," she heard herself say, not missing how Marie's eyes went comically wide or how her jaw dropped to the floor.

"You—what?" The doctor asked in complete disbelief. "You have a daughter?"

The faintest ghost of a smile formed on her lips and Ellis shook her head in confirmation, her heart twisting painfully in the process. "I have a daughter."

* * *

_April, Seven Weeks Ago_

_Ellis groaned as the jarring sound of the phone ringing cut into her sleep. Flipping over, she grabbed the offending object off the bedside table and examined the screen, her brows automatically crinkling in pure confusion._

_As a doctor, she was used to receiving phone calls throughout all hours of the night, but what she wasn't used to was seeing a call from a number with a Seattle area code. Thinking immediately of one person in particular, she didn't waste a second picking it up._

"_Hello?"_

"_Ellis? Ellis is that you?" Her ex-husband's voice said on the other line. "It's me, Thatch—Thatcher."_

_Ellis' heart sped up and her throat suddenly went dry, all she wanted to do was run downstairs and guzzle down an entire bottle of water. "Thatcher? What's going on? Is she—is she alright?" Ellis croaked out, thousands of scenarios, medical emergencies specifically, flashed through her mind at an alarming rate._

"_Meredith is… she's fine," Thatcher said unconvincingly. "But she… she is the reason I called."_

"_What's going on, Thatcher?" Ellis prompted, now sitting up and turning on the lamp. "It's nearly four in the morning here, which means that it's almost one in Seattle. Is she okay?"_

"_She—Mer, she ran away tonight b-but we found her," Thatcher stammered. "Susan and I found her, she's back home, but I—we don't think she's okay, Ellis."_

"_What do you mean she ran away?" Ellis questioned while a sinking feeling in the pits of her stomach began to grow, concern for her daughter and irritation with the father overtaking her emotions. Leave it to Thatcher to lose a ten-year-old._

"_Ellis, listen," Thatcher said, his voice noticeably shaky. "Susan, she's my fiancée. We're going to get married soon. And we've been talking, a lot. We've been talking about Meredith and what's going to be best for her. And it's not us. We… we can't give her what she needs."_

_Ellis forced herself to breathe as Thatcher began to explain._

"_I tried, El. Meredith and I, we were okay in the beginning, but lately. I just… she's so smart you know, she's absolutely brilliant and curious. So curious. And also fearless, which you know—she doesn't get from me, and she's determined and stubborn, and that I think she gets from you. But…"_

"_But what, Thatcher?" Ellis demanded after the man's voice trailed off, ignoring how her heart filled with both pride and despair at his rambling description of their daughter._

"_But she's getting older and a year ago, she began asking questions about us and about you," Thatcher said, a bit taken aback by how conditioned he still was to respond to the inflections in his ex-wife's voice. Inhaling a generous breath, he continued. "And she's so angry, for a little girl, she's so angry. And she doesn't talk to me and she—I think she's hurting and I just don't know how to help her. Susan and I—we tried everything. We've been trying for months but she just keeps acting up, getting in all sorts of trouble at school. We had to convince the principal to let her stay to finish the year, so she could at least stay with her friends through grade school. We don't know what to do anymore. She won't… I don't know what she's thinking. I don't know what she wants, but I know it's not me El and I know it's not Susan. I think—"_

"_What?" Ellis hissed incredulously, as if she was daring him not to finish that sentence. "You think what, Thatcher?" She asked, already knowing the answer._

"_I think she needs you, Ellis. I think she needs her mother," Thatcher said quietly. "I-I just don't know what to do with her anymore."_

"_So you're just giving up, then?" Ellis accused, a scorching swell of anger thrumming through her veins. "You're just going to toss her aside and give her back to me? You—Thatcher, you're the one who fought for custody. You're the one who got the lawyers involved and decimated me and my ability to be mother. You're the one who convinced everyone that you would have the time to raise Meredith. You said you would take care of her. I haven't seen her in five years Thatcher because you promised, you—"_

"_I know, Ellis. I know… and I feel awful, believe me. But Meredith is… she's growing up and she's not that little anymore, not as forgiving. You and I, we both made our mistakes. But Meredith. She's… she is the one thing we did right, Ellis. I love her. I do. But we have to do better by her. We've got to do what's best."_

"_And you think the best is ripping her away from the only home she's ever known and forcing her to come live with me, a mother she barely knows," Ellis countered back, all semblance of calm, vanished. "I haven't seen her in five years, Thatcher. How do you even know that I'm what's best for her or I'm what she needs or wants. I have a career. I have—I work 100 hours at a minimum every week. Where do you suppose a ten-year-old fits in any of that? I… you were the one. You were the one who made the commitment. You said that I couldn't have both, that I couldn't have my career and my—" her breath hitched on the last word. "My baby."_

_A profound silence, thick enough to fill the space between Boston and Seattle, settled heavily in between them. The only thing Ellis could hear was the pounding in her chest, it was the one sign she had that she wasn't dreaming. "How do you know?" She practically whispered._

_Not used to the raw vulnerability in the world-renowned surgeon's voice, Thatcher swallowed thickly before replying._

"_Because when Susan and I found her earlier, she was at the train station, waiting for a bus, to go to Boston," he answered. "To see you, Ellis. To see her mom."_

* * *

**A/N: More soon, but would love to hear your thoughts so far! **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you for all the interest in this story! Again, please remember that this is AU and I am going to try my very best to keep everyone in character, but if they're not… well then, let's just chalk it up to creative liberty.**

* * *

Her knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, Ellis drew in a deep breath while she peeked at the rearview mirror to catch another glimpse of her daughter, struck again by how much Meredith had grown up.

She was tall and gangly for a ten-year-old, her wavy, dark blonde hair unkempt, her striking green eyes soft, and she wore a sort-of lost and broken expression that looked rather abnormal on a young child's face, an expression that Ellis couldn't help but blame herself for.

Apart from the mumbled hello and painfully awkward hug shared between the two of them at baggage claim, their reunion has been relatively silent and glaringly uncomfortable. It's not that Ellis was expecting a run into each other's arms type of reunion. Real life didn't work that way. She and Meredith didn't work that way.

There's been too… _much_ between them. Too much time, too much space. Five years and an entire continent. Ellis and her daughter might as well have been a million worlds apart. Physically and consequently, emotionally.

But she couldn't have fathomed how clueless she would feel or how ill prepared she was to even begin to close that gaping distance between them. They were essentially strangers. It was all so unfamiliar, and it unnerved her more than she could have possibly imagined.

Her eyes drifted to steal another look at Meredith, and her heart wrenched in her chest painfully when she caught her daughter wipe away an errant tear in a frantic motion. Whatever sliver of maternal instincts Ellis had inside of her automatically screamed at her to ask the girl if she was okay, but the moment she parted her lips, words predictably failed her.

Choking on the silence of her own shortcomings, she clasped her mouth shut and swallowed back the lump in her throat. Although this was the closest physically they've been in years, Ellis has felt never further away from her daughter than ever before.

* * *

_After the conversation with Thatcher, she spent the next few weeks getting her affairs in order. She didn't need to be convinced. The man even suggested that Meredith could stay with his sister in Spokane, but she was not going to entertain the notion of anyone else raising her child. Not even in the slightest. Despite how ill prepared she felt, she was determined to work it out._

_She had to figure out school for the fall, find activities to keep the girl occupied in the summer, hire a nanny, organize a bedroom, contact the lawyers, rearrange her schedule at the hospital, and sort out any other details that was involved in the process of moving her ten-year-old daughter across the country to live with her. To be with her._

_It kept her occupied. Details she can manage. A checklist she can handle. She was excellent at accomplishing tasks. It kept her focus from everything else. It drew her attention away from confronting so many of the feelings she's buried deep. Feelings that she left behind in Seattle._

_A few days after Thatcher told her of the situation, she made a split-second decision to call Meredith, a rare occasion for the two of them. Ellis tried to keep in touch when she first moved away. She wanted to be aware of what was happening in her daughter's life. She wanted to know if she was okay. But she was also in the early years of her residency then. She was preoccupied and she was fighting for her place at Mass Gen, so one missed call turned into three. Three turned into angry voicemails from Thatcher accusing her once again of putting her career over their daughter. Eventually, the calls stopped happening altogether. And for some reason, Ellis couldn't bring herself to pick up the phone to return any of them. Somewhere along the way, she felt like she lost the right to. So apart from the monthly child support checks, consistently exceeding the amount required, and the birthday gifts and cards, always just signed "Love, Mom," Ellis' relationship with her daughter was virtually nonexistent. _

_But because she was about to have custody of her full-time, she knew she needed to jump off the ledge and at least try, so she picked up the phone and spoke to her daughter for the first time in years._

"_Hello?" A timid voice said on the other line._

"_Hi Meredith, it's me… mom. How are you doing?"_

_The young girl was silent on the other line and Ellis immediately wanted to hang up. What kind of question was that? Her entire world was about to turn upside down, and she had no control over it._

"_I-I'm okay," Meredith finally answered. "How are you?"_

"_I'm okay," Ellis parroted._

_She swallowed hard realizing that she was probably going to have to take the lead here. She's never had the right instincts when it came to her daughter. Ellis was good at a lot of things, maybe even brilliant, but being a parent was not one of them. Having a child was always Thatcher's idea. It's not that she was opposed, she had willingly agreed to have a baby. Their marriage at that point had already started to disintegrate. In hindsight, she knew full-well that she should have never married the research professor. Aside from their shared love of learning, they didn't have a lot in common. Thatcher was flawed but he was also gentle and soft, sensitive and kind. He genuinely cared about her. And for someone like her, who was quite literally the opposite, Thatcher was a safe place to land._

_They were happy at some point. That much she knew. She figured that having a baby would make them happier. And Meredith had. Meredith was… the moment Ellis held her baby girl in her arms, she was no longer just the answer to their crumbling marriage. Meredith was everything. Ellis has never felt pure, unadulterated love for anything or anyone like that before in her entire life. She didn't know she was capable of it. The only thing that's come even remotely close to that for her since then was surgery._

_However, she soon found that loving her daughter and being there for her were two very different things. The latter proved to be far more difficult than she expected. So while Thatcher was at home, taking care of Meredith and learning how to be a parent, she was at work, learning how to be a surgeon and spending time with… him._

_The rest of it played out how it played out. Ellis wasn't a regretful person. Through it all, she's owned the decisions that she's made. She's taken responsibility for how her life has turned out. But Meredith. Meredith was the one thing that's filled her with so much regret sometimes that she couldn't breathe. Meredith was always the one thing that she would do all over again if she could. And now that she finally had the opportunity to, she doesn't even know how to feel. Or how to rise above the doubts, fears, and insecurities that was pulling her under._

"_Are you still there?" Meredith said, jarring Ellis from her thoughts._

"_Yes, I'm sorry. I—Meredith, can I ask you something?"_

"_Sure mom," the girl answered, employing a label that effectively snapped the mother's heart into two._

"_I talked to your father, but I want to hear it from you. Is this—are you sure about this? Are you okay with coming here to Boston… to be with me?"_

"_Do you not want me to?" Meredith couldn't help but ask._

"_I do," Ellis said, surprising herself at the conviction in her voice. "If it's what you want."_

"_I do too. If it's what you want," her daughter echoed._

_Smiling, Ellis released a breath that's felt tortuously trapped in her chest for days. "It is what I want," she confirmed._

_Maybe it's what she even needed._

* * *

Hours after arriving from the airport, Ellis sat alone in her living room, nursing a glass of red wine. A firm believer in practicing what she preached, she never smoked and she rarely drank, but tonight, she decided to indulge.

Bringing Meredith home had taken a lot more out of her than she had anticipated. The girl continued her silent treatment throughout the rest of the afternoon and well into evening. She didn't instigate conversation, resorting to only answering questions Ellis threw her way politely and succinctly. She quietly followed Ellis around when the older woman gave her a tour of her new home and then spent the rest of the day getting acclimated in her new bedroom. After dinner, she declined any help with her bath and opted for an early bedtime.

Unsure if this was normal behavior for Meredith, the mother let it go for now. She's aware that there was going to be a steep learning curve for the two of them and that there would be an adjustment period, so if for the time being, Meredith didn't feel like talking to her, she wasn't going to force it. It was Meredith's life that she and Thatcher disrupted, so as far as the mother was concerned, the ten-year-old deserved the right to process this in the way that she wanted or needed to. Ellis, herself, didn't even know what to say at this point. What could she say?

Taking a sip and setting the glass aside, she took off her reading glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting back an intense form of exhaustion burning behind her eyes. She took a deep breath and turned the page of the medical journal in her hands, attempting to shift her focus on the news of current, developing, and innovative medical procedures. This was usually her favorite thing to do to relax, but she couldn't get through a single paragraph without her thoughts drifting back to the little girl upstairs. Ellis had hoped to tuck her in for bed, a ritual that she missed habitually back in Seattle, but the girl was already asleep when she checked in on her. Or so she thought, suddenly hearing the creak of the stairs behind her.

She closed the journal and waited in anticipation for her daughter to come into view, slightly taken aback again at how much older Meredith looked. It was the most tangible piece of evidence the mother had of their years apart. Setting the reading material down on her lap, she simply took in the girl staring back at her. "You okay, Mer?"

Meredith toed the carpet and chewed her bottom lip in contemplation. She nodded.

Sighing because she couldn't help her daughter if she didn't know how to, Ellis pat the vacant spot on the couch next to her and smiled when little feet scurried crossed the room to join her.

"I thought you were tired?" Ellis said, drinking in the warmth emanating from the child next to her.

Meredith shrugged.

"Is your room okay? Are you comfortable?"

Meredith cocked her head and met her mother's gaze, choosing again to only nod her approval.

"Okay, good," Ellis said softly. "Just let me know if you need anything. I know this is hard and a lot to get used to, but I hope that you will let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

Her fingers acting of their own accord, Ellis tentatively reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her daughter's ear, not missing how Meredith's entire body seemed to pull back and stiffen at her touch.

Stamping down the hurt rising at the reaction, Ellis blinked hard and drew her hand away. If her daughter was uncomfortable around her, she was the only reason why, the only one at fault. Sighing again, she stared down at her lap while searched her mind for the right words. "I don't talk either when I get scared. I don't… talk when I feel overwhelmed."

"You're scared?" Meredith asked, surprising them both with the question.

"Yes," Ellis decided to be honest. "I am scared. But I'm happy too, Meredith. I'm happy that you're here."

"You are?"

It was Ellis' turn to nod her head.

"But you didn't want me," the girl whispered, shaking her head, seeming to have missed the record speed that Ellis blanched at the accusation.

"And then dad didn't want me," she added.

"Meredith—"

"You left."

Ellis paused and squared her jaw at that remark. She looked down at her hands half expecting her writhing heart to be resting there. Guilt scratched at her throat as she looked up and was instantly confronted by hurt and confusion brightening green eyes. How could she possibly begin to explain to her daughter that she didn't leave her because she wanted to. That if only she was stronger, she would've stayed. That if only she was a better mom, they wouldn't have been separated. That if only she wasn't selfish, maybe they wouldn't be sitting here now, next to one another other, but still feeling like they were a million worlds apart.

"I'm sorry, Meredith," Ellis finally said, leaving it at that, knowing that anything else right now wouldn't be enough.

A lump formed in her throat and she hesitantly rested a soft hand on her daughter's arm, looking back down at her expectantly.

Meredith went back to only nodding, but this time, she didn't pull away from her mother's touch.


End file.
